seriesxi-episodes

Well, this is a relief. After almost a week of ignoring the massive elephant in the room (an elephant that is now back online), Red Dwarf XI‘s full episode list has been officially sent out into the wild. Episode titles, synopses, they’re all there. Despite the unfortunate early release, it’s nice to get this information in this way rather than the previous method of rooting through BBFC’s bins. So, let’s take a look, shall we? Continue reading

Friday lunchtime rolls around, and once again provides an intriguing tweet treat to keep us going throughout the weekend.

Well, it certainly seems to me like Lister will wake up to discover a deranged droid has stolen some of his body parts. That seems to be the droid in question – the scaredy-cat Seb Patrick’s tweet suggests so – and it looks brilliant. Unusual, creepy, and not unlike an evil fish. The only way this can go wrong is if it turns out that it’s Kerry Shale under the costume.

It’s Friday, it’s round about lunchtime, it’s three near-identical tweets from various official accounts time! This week, as they got there first by a matter of seconds, let’s embed @RedDwarfHQ’s:

It’s a storyboard! A storyboard with actual dialogue on it! When it’s fully embiggened, you can see that the establishing shot looks somewhat similar to the recce that Richard tweeted ages ago, which, when combined with the desired angle being so high, suggests that this is a location sequence. We also now know that in one episode, the Dwarfers board a space station (I’m assuming space, as opposed to railway) amidst an asteroid storm, and split off into pairs. There’s also a joke that, while far from unpredictable, is undeniably Rimmer-ish. This is very exciting.

Credit also to Nik Afia for the brilliant artwork, proving that he’s just as adept at capturing the likenesses of our main characters as he is at spaceships. I hope we get to see a lot more of this work at some point, either in the form of teasers ahead of broadcast, or a more substantial gallery when it’s all done and dusted.

Lunchtime on a Friday has always been a traditional time to receive a weekly dose of Red Dwarf news, and it seems that the various Dwarf-affiliated Twitter accounts have decided to follow TOS’s lead. Today, @RedDwarfHQ, @Join_Dave and @babycowLtd have all tweeted variations of the following:

Twentica!  That’s an excellent sounding title. Now, I don’t know for sure, as the episode titles were not revealed to the audience at the time, but I’m pretty confident that this is one of the two episodes I saw recorded. And I wasn’t at the first recording session. While Series X stuck rigidly to the same order for recording and broadcast, it seems that they’re happy to jiggle things about this time round, a practice which took place more often than not in the old days. Either Doug, UKTV or both clearly think that this is the best episode to launch with… and without giving anything away, I can totally see why.

The pre-publicity machine is well and truly up and running now, and it’s growing ever closer. There are now somewhere between 55 and 85 days to go until the launch of Red Dwarf XI. Blimey.

Apologies for being a bit quiet of late. We've all been busy watching our country slide inexorably into the abyss, whilst remembering the wise words of Arnold J Rimmer. We needed something big and Dwarfy to take our minds off things, and that has arrived this Friday lunchtime. But before we get on to that, what have we missed?

Well, the model shoot is now done and dusted, and post-production is well underway, to the extent that rough cuts are being shown to interested parties. Some guy has made a Lego thing, which we're not going to dedicate an entire front page post to, no matter how many times he emails us. Oh, and somewhat bizarrely, Series 1-V are to be released on Blu-ray. This makes very little sense to me; upscaling the likes of RTD-era Doctor Who to HD is one thing, but we're talking about 625-line analogue masters on long-since-obsolete tape formats from nearly thirty years ago. Hats will be eaten if the increase in quality is enough to justify spending £25 a pop on them, and hell will freeze over if there's any new commentaries or extras.

And finally, Doug dropped a subtle hint yesterday that appeared to confirm that Series XI will air in September as expected. This was somewhat superseded by today's TOS update, which not only makes the September date officially official, but also provides a whacking great series synopsis. Let's break it down, whilst also remembering that our spoiler policy prevents those that attended recordings from confirming or denying any speculation, shall we?

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